by Brea Viragh
The two men continued to hold one another’s stare, and Van could see the silent words Calen didn’t have to say out loud. Thank you for caring so much about her.
It wasn’t Odessa, per say, that had Van leaping at the opportunity to break the curse. He had his own motives, a game within a game, and no matter what happened, he was determined to come out the victor.
I’ll find you.
He’d made a promise years ago. He intended to keep it.
Calen’s face gave nothing away as he nodded, turning back to stare out the window.
“Where should we go to discuss our plans, then?” he murmured.
Van picked at an invisible piece of lint on his shirt. “I’d suggest going to my own lodge, but there will be ears there, as well. I’d suggest the lake, but I don’t trust the mage not to hear our every word, as well. Tell me you have an alternative. A place undisturbed where we might talk in privacy. Perhaps a house no one knows about anymore?”
The way Calen’s eyes turned glacial, Van knew his purposeful jab had struck a nerve, a deep one. Good, he thought. They were on the same page without him having to reveal all of his cards yet.
“The place is probably in ruins,” Calen said dryly. “I haven’t stepped foot there since their death.”
“Which means no one will think to go there to look for us. Especially if it’s abandoned. Why didn’t you sell it?”
Calen shrugged, the gesture purposefully vague. “It wasn’t mine to sell. Upon their death, the land reverted back to the Taunway Lake pack. Alex holds the deed now. He likely doesn’t remember it exists anymore,” he said, returning his attention out the window. “It was small enough not to make a difference when it came to housing. More of a one-bedroom cabin than anything substantial.”
“Then let’s check it out. We’re wasting time.”
Hunting for the knife wouldn’t be the best option for them, Van mused as they walked outside underneath the starry night sky. An impossible task with a guaranteed outcome, yes, but the hunt would take too long and shoot them further from Odessa.
But it was disheartening, knowing they were running out of time and had no viable options. Not when everything he’d read about the knife—and he’d read a fair bit over the years—agreed on one thing. There was a sacrifice demanded, if one could even retrieve the thing from its resting place. There were no loopholes or a way around it. Facing the terror of the sacrifice after risking so much to obtain it...no one on this earth had the strength to go through with it.
And slaughter...
It meant they had to consider other alternatives—other ways to get what they wanted and break the curse. Whenever they found the time. If he could somehow get his hands on the pelts of the wolves who had been skinned, he might be able to find a link between them and the magic wielder. Magic of that kind carried a trace, a signature like a fingerprint if one knew the right combination to draw it to the surface.
“If I remember correctly, it’s through the woods. A long walk,” Calen said as he tried to distract. To get them to go somewhere else, anywhere else, besides the place where he’d been born. “I haven’t been there since the night I was brought in.”
Van stuck his hands in his pockets. “Then it’s a good thing we have time.”
He lost Calen to contemplation and the rest of the several-mile hike, which had probably felt like an eternity to a young child—passed if not quickly then in relatively easy silence.
What would it have been like to lose his own parents at such a tender age? He’d lost his brother in their teens, a life-or-death situation rather than a strategic move, although if he hadn’t been in that position, then the outcome would have been the same one way or another. There was no getting around Theron’s bloodthirsty nature. Not when the other wolf had his eye on the alpha seat, as well.
As per pack law, the title could have gone to either one of them at their father’s choosing. But Theron’s ambition had always been greater than his ability to see the bigger picture. He would have done anything to get what he wanted, even if it meant throwing the rest of the pack into ruin.
When he’d come for Van under the cloak of darkness with a knife in his hand, it had been a matter of adrenaline. Of doing what he needed to do to survive, and knowing with a heavy heart that it not only meant his life, but the rest of the pack.
His father had mourned the loss of his older son but said nothing when the dynamic of power changed. And his mother...
Van didn’t want to think about the sweet-faced woman who had lost a part of herself that night. Or the fact that he had been the one to cause those shadows on her face, the weight to skim off her once-strong physique and the vacant look in her eyes.
Calen held out an arm to stop him when Van would have continued to march through the darkness, his eyesight impeccable. “Hold on.”
“What’s the matter?” he snapped out. Displeased with himself for following the line of his thoughts back into the bleakness of his past. They had, indeed, been walking for a long time, through the woods bordering the property.
“It’s just ahead.”
“Yes, I’d hope so. Otherwise you would have been circling us around in the dark for no reason.”
But when he made to move forward, he found that arm holding strong, Calen’s throat bobbing and his eyes wide.
Dear Jesus. Was he going to have to baby the wolf all night long?
“Look,” Van began softly. “This is our best chance for speaking without anyone overhearing our plans. I have enough power to create tiny pockets of air to shield us. For a time. But I can’t do any more without the big sacrifice, if you know what I mean.”
He could already do more than any others, thanks to those books he’d loved. There were some spells that did not require any magic in the holder, just the right combination of words and natural ingredients, most of which were found in the gardens surrounding the manor house.
“It’s been such a long time.”
Calen’s exclamation cut through the hush of the night despite the softness of the syllables. Some part of him, a part he was probably just as hesitant to acknowledge as anyone else, trembled at the sight.
And when Van looked forward, he did indeed see the outline of the cabin. One story made of logs bigger than a man’s midsection. The sloping roof had collapsed on one side thanks to a fallen branch. The windows were empty and staring, although the glass remained.
Twenty years. It had been twenty years since anyone had stepped foot on the doorstep.
“The wolf didn’t give me time to pack a bag when he came to retrieve me,” Calen murmured. “He dragged me out of the bed, fever raging, and told me to come with him. I don’t remember much of the trip until he tossed me in front of Alex. I had the clothes on my back and nothing more. When he told me what had happened...I froze. And then there was Odessa standing there, smiling at me. It was unspoken, I suppose, that I not come back here again. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see everything that I’d had and lost.”
“Well, no time like the present.”
A slight nod in his direction. Calen said little else, his steps slow as he approached the cabin. Van stared at his back for a moment longer before joining him.
He knew this would be a challenge going into it. Knew it would be pushing Calen to a breaking point. But the way Van saw it, Calen needed to get mad. Needed to tap into whatever emotions he needed to in order to help them break the spell.
When Calen paused for a moment too long at the door to the cabin, cobwebs and dust keeping the wood together, Van reached past him and nudged.
The stench of earthen decay assaulted them the moment they stepped inside.
Van’s next breath filled his lungs with the heaviness of dust and dirt, drawing a cough before he could hold it inside.
“I...” Calen stopped, and then trailed off, his hands plunging into the deep pockets of his pants.
He didn’t need to say anything else.
“Where?” Van aske
d.
Calen jerked his head in the direction of his old bedroom. “To the left. Off the kitchen.”
The large stone fireplace lay empty and vacant. Waiting for someone to tend to the flames, to stoke them from warm and comforting coals into a roaring inferno to heat the entirety of the cabin. Black soot streaks still marked those stones.
Too long, Van thought. Too long had Calen been running from this place, from this part of himself. It did no one any good to run anymore.
“We used to sit on the couch in the living room and tell stories. Just make them up as we went,” Calen remembered, his first steps inside tentative. “It didn’t matter what kind of crazy, inane things came out of my mouth. They always indulged me, made time for me.”
The two of them walked over to the doorway to the single bedroom, Calen setting his feet and refusing to go any further.
“Why?”
“Why what?” Van pushed.
“Why is it so hard to come back here even after all this time?”
Van chuckled and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. “It’s always going to be this way when you face a part of your past you’d rather let fall to ash. I can’t go by my brother’s grave without being reminded.”
Calen, it seemed, understood that the levity in the other man’s voice did nothing but throw a mask over the pain.
His face was tight, as though he knew precisely how much this little trip would cost them—how he should be willing to pay whatever price to break Odessa’s curse.
The moment meant nothing to Van, but he understood.
Calen said to him, “Is this the kind of privacy you had in mind for our meetings?”
A quick glance around the room, and a nod. “Something like this,” Van said, ignoring the slight tingling along his spine. “It’s out of the way and abandoned. Somewhere where no one is going to think to look for us. Especially since we don’t want anyone knowing what kind of information we seek.”
“Then it’s ours.” Calen met his gaze. “We need to be as prepared as we can before we head back to the lake, especially if the magician plans to kill again.”
“What’s this I hear about killing?”
The baritone shattered the silence, and in the shadows through the doorway, a man rose from his knees. Eyes red and fangs flashing.
Chapter 14
Odessa shifted back to human the moment the moonlight touched the lake water, the crackling storm of magic overhead dissipating seconds later. Alone, save for the rest of her friends treading water behind her, still trapped.
The magician hadn’t deemed it necessary to release the bindings keeping them in bird form during the night. Would not. A punishment for them, she knew, because of her. Because she had allowed Calen and Van to find her, see her, and learn of her secrets.
The mage enjoyed the torment all the more knowing the rest of them could not aid Odessa when she needed it, and knowing she could not give the same to them in return.
Pushing her arms through the water weakly, she headed to the shore with the brightly colored mandarin duck keeping up with her movements.
Any word from Calen? I’m starting to get a little nervous. How much longer do we have to wait?
Jean’s voice skittered along the edges of her awareness, a voice it had taken time to hear while in her human form. Days to distinguish from the loneliness and screaming in her own mind. Odessa was all the more grateful for the ability now.
She shook her head and pushed waterlogged hair out of her eyes. “Not yet. But he’s working on something. I can feel it.”
A bond between you. Oh, don’t try to deny it. There’s always been something.
“Something,” Odessa repeated with a chuckle.
A bond, she wasn’t sure. She shared the communication with the rest of her Lycans, the way they all did, although things with Calen had always been a bit different. Perhaps “bond” was putting it mildly. She knew what he was thinking when they were together, without him saying a word. She knew his moods and his feelings from the highest highs to the lowest lows.
And had always chalked it up to their friendship. It worked the same way with Jean, with Chelsea. Didn’t it?
Yes. All those times I had to come fetch you for this or that, only to find you and Calen giggling with each other. Jean said it with enough disgust to have the other woman’s smile growing. You never trusted me the way you did him.
“What? Jean, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were jealous.”
...maybe.
“Oh, stop. There’s nothing for you to worry about. Whatever bond you think is there, trust me. It’s nothing. Exigent circumstances.” Odessa said it more to quiet her own mind than to assure Jean.
It’s there. And you know what? I’m glad for it, if it means we can trust him to get us out of here. Man. Jean laughed. All these years, I thought you only spoke to him because he is a good baker. It seems I underestimated the depths of your friendship. Your affection.
“It was easy to do,” Odessa murmured. “No one wanted to see it because no one wanted to see him.”
You’re right. If we get out of this, I might even be forced to apologize. But it’s a big if.
The ease at which Jean accepted the bond was as much a shock to Odessa as the bond itself. The long days entombed in swan form had given her time for introspection. And there, in the depths of her shadows she hadn’t thought to explore, she had found a thread binding her to Calen. It had taken work to travel along that thread, and she still wasn’t sure what she’d find at the other end, but if she focused all her concentration there, she could feel hints of him. Emotions and snippets of thought.
The spike of terror she’d randomly experienced in the middle of the day was an example, resulting in her nearly jumping out of her feathers and scaring the rest of her flock of friends.
Whatever Calen had gone through, it hadn’t been good. Just as the tendril of unease she felt now surely did not belong to her.
Or maybe it did, and she’d gotten everything mixed up in her head.
“Whatever is going on, I don’t want you to worry,” Odessa told Jean.
How can I not?
Odessa rested her hip on the sand, drawing that hair over her shoulder and working her fingers through each strand, the knots there refusing to loosen. Duck Jean followed her out of the water and left little webbed footprints in her wake.
“The magician wants us scared,” Odessa continued, changing focus. “He wants us isolated so that he can break us down mentally. He’ll want to ensure we feel as much panic and fear as possible. Even when we have to wait, let’s not give the mage a second more than he deserves. We can’t let him know we’re affected in any way.”
It took time for her to adjust to her human lungs. To her human senses, so unlike those she’d grown accustomed to as a Lycan. Each breath pained her. Her muscles pinched and ached, unbearably frail and breakable compared to the woman she’d been.
When do you think he’ll come for us again? Jean asked, the thought accompanied by a sizzle of anxiety.
Meaning the mage.
Whenever it would be, Odessa didn’t think the man would wait much longer to make an appearance. There was no reason to his visits usually, no pattern she could grasp regarding when he chose to come and go. She hadn’t sensed him those first few times he had shown up, and it had taken her up until yesterday to recognize his energy when he stepped foot on the lakeshore. Foul, hungry—a beast wearing a man’s skin.
Her stomach growled and she would have given anything for a large cheese pizza with extra pepperoni.
“That is the million-dollar question,” she replied to Jean.
The mandarin lifted its head to meet her stare. Odessa strove to keep her own face calm and show no fear when that’s where her emotions wanted to go. To see Jean from that duck’s face, to know that this was her fault that they were here, that she couldn’t figure out the next move... What could she do?
“I’m not sure w
hat the plan is.” She went on to say. “I’m not sure what we should be doing, how we should be acting, until we hear from Calen and Van.” She’d tried seeking out the lesson the mage wanted her to learn. Whatever it was, whatever weakness he’d wanted her to overcome, she didn’t know.
Should we be seeking other allies?
A near impossible task, without the ability to leave the lake. But if she could get the rest of the flock on board with something, anything, then they might have a chance of finding a weak point in the mage’s shields. Surely none of the trapped birds were there without reason. Who knew! They might have a witch or a telepath in their midst.
She slowly nodded. “It might be a good thing to do, if we can leave the lake during the day. Although making ourselves understood...that’s a different hurdle entirely.”
If we don’t do something soon, then I will go mad.
Odessa could have sworn she felt a whisper of darkness accompanying the statement from Jean’s mind.
She sat on the beach and gazed vacantly across the calm waters. Right to where the house stood shielded by trees. The house where she’d been trapped for an entire day, her stomach an empty void and her instincts on high alert as she waited to be consumed. She chewed the inside of her lip.
“Don’t worry. I have no intention of letting this go on for much longer.” She’d find a way.
The mandarin duck blinked.
“I’m not sure what I can do, but I promise you, I won’t let you stay like this.” Odessa gathered her friend onto her lap, the tiny bird weighing hardly anything at all. How, she wondered for the umpteenth time, did a spell compact someone like Jean, someone full of life and fire and fight, into a package this size?
She had no desire to see anything like what happened to them, what happened to her bridesmaids and pack mates, happen to anyone else. A full-scale slaughter like that deserved swift and brutal retribution. If she hadn’t been spelled, then maybe she might have been able to save them.
It was an anchor she’d carry for the rest of her days.
She shook her head to clear the horrors from her mind, although the damage had already been done to her stomach. “He wants us weak and divided,” she told Jean. “Killing the girls was the first part of whatever plan he’s hatched. He won’t tell us what it is, but we don’t need the particulars.”
